Documenting Neighborhood History in the Rogers Road Neighborhood of Chapel Hill
Thursday, June 25
Wilson Library
5 p.m. – Reception and exhibit viewing
5:45 p.m. – Program
Free and open to the public
Information: 919-962-4207 or liza_terll@unc.edu

A panel presentation featuring Rev. Robert Campbell, other members of the Rogers Road neighborhood, and researcher Emily Eidenier

Unidentified couple from the
Walker Family photos, ca. 1920s.
North Carolina Collection.

May 21, 2009 — For 37 years, the Rogers Road community in Chapel Hill has been at the center of a public debate about the impact of the Orange County Landfill, which borders the neighborhood. A new exhibit in the North Carolina Collection Gallery of UNC’s Wilson Library tells a deeper story, uncovering more than two centuries of the community’s history.

The free, public exhibit, We’re All Family Here: Preserving Community Heritage in the Rogers Road Neighborhood of Chapel Hill, will be open June 12 through August 31 in the North Carolina Collection Gallery, on the main floor of Wilson Library. (more here)

The Orange County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday night to keep a Chapel Hill-owned site on Millhouse Road on the table as a potential location for a county solid waste transfer station. The vote came before a packed Southern Human Services Center assembly of citizens, many of whom had just stood to voice their opposition to the site.

The 4-3 vote moves forward a proposal to ask the Town of Chapel Hill to formally offer the property, which is north of the town’s new operations center. Pending that offer, county staff will conduct a feedback session over the summer and is due to report the findings in August, when the commission returns from summer recess. (more here)

CHAPEL HILL — In a split vote Tuesday, the Orange County commissioners kept open the possibility of siting a solid-waste transfer station on Millhouse Road, about a mile from the current garbage dump.

Despite evidence presented by Rogers Road residents that Millhouse Road is part of their neighborhood, commissioners voted 4-3 to ask the Chapel Hill Town Council to officially offer part of a 32-acre site adjacent to the Town Operations Center for use as a transfer station. (more)

Millhouse Road site frustrates many

Steven Norton, City Editor

Orange County will offer a site on Millhouse Road for formal consideration as a possible location for a new waste transfer station.

The decision was a result of a 4-3 vote by the Orange County Board of Commissioners at their meeting Tuesday. This keeps the option on the table, despite adamant opposition from Millhouse Road and Rogers Road community residents.

Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy suggested the site as a potential alternative at a work session May 14. (more)

With all that money in Chapel Hill, you would think the town could afford some manners for its mayor. Yet here we are, considering a waste transfer station site proposed by Mayor Foy, conceived without consulting the Town Council, commissioners or citizens. Fortuitously for him, the site is owned by Chapel Hill, yet outside town limits. Not even one of his constituents would be affected by his proposal.

Disbelief abounds as Mayor Foy once again foists upon this modest part of the county yet one more of the ugly necessities that keep a community running. To prove this is no exaggeration…(more here)

With all that money in Chapel Hill, you would think the town could afford some manners for its mayor.

Yet here we are, considering a waste transfer station site proposed by Mayor Foy, an action all his own, conceived without consulting the town council, commissioners or citizens. Fortuitously for him, the site is owned by Chapel Hill, yet outside town limits. Not even one of his constituents would be affected by his proposal.

Disbelief abounds as Mayor Foy once again foists upon this modest part of the county yet one more of the ugly necessities that keep a community running, burdens that would precipitate conniptions anywhere else. (more here)

What began as an effort to document the effects of 35 years of a landfill on the Rogers-Eubanks community has grown into something much more – an account of the broader history of this predominantly African-American community, and a source of community pride.

Emily Eidenier, a graduate student in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, specializes in health behavior and health education. (more here)